In Weezy’s world they all had secret agendas. Not that she didn’t trust them to do their jobs; she did—as long as those jobs didn’t interfere with their secret agendas. And number one on their list of agendas was guarding the secret history of the world, which included the secret history of America, which in turn involved the secret history of the Pine Barrens.
No, Weezy would expect no help from the authorities.
Jack had always laughed off her theories as wacky. After the events of this past week he was finding that a lot harder to do.
Once in his room, he closed the door, then lowered the shades, thinking, I don’t believe I’m doing this.
Then he pulled out the bottom drawer of his bureau and checked the space below. Two sheets of paper lay there. He pulled them out and checked them in the dim light.
Yep. Weezy’s copies, safe and sound.
He replaced them, slipped the drawer back into place, raised his shades, then returned to the sidewalk.
“Right where I left them,” he said as he reached Weezy. “Want me to make copies for you?”
“No-no-no!” she said. “Someone might have copiers staked out. Just leave them right where they are.”
They stood in silence, looking around. Jack was beginning to wonder if whatever Weezy had was catching.
“Well,” he said finally, “at least they didn’t get the pyramid too.”
She slapped her forehead. “Ohmygod! I’ve been so crazy about the box I forgot about the pyramid. We’ve got to get it back!”
“So it can be stolen too? At least we know it’s safe down at the Smithsonian.”
“Don’t be so sure. I want it back. I’ll have my mother rent a safety deposit box and keep it there.”
Jack smiled and nudged her. “What about the international banking conspiracy? Won’t they be able to get into the box?”
She frowned. “I never thought of that.”
“Weez, I’m kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Jack shook his head, then closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his temples.
“I see a visit to Professor Nakamura in the near future.”
Weez gave his arm a gentle slap. “Not ‘near’—immediate. Get your bike.”
8
A Japanese woman Jack assumed was Mrs. Nakamura answered the door.
“Ohayo gozaimasu,” Weezy said, all sweetness and light as she made a quick little bow from the waist. “Would you please tell the professor that Jack and Louise wish to speak to him about the pyramid? He will understand.”
The woman smiled and bowed back. “Dozo yoroshiku. Wait here. I’ll tell him.”
“Arigato.”
Jack made a conscious effort to close his dropped jaw as he stared at Weezy.
She noticed. “What?”
“Since when do you know Japanese?”
“Since forever. I’m fluent in it.”
“No, really.”
She smiled. “Okay, after we met the professor I started thinking about it, so I picked up a Japanese phrase book at the library.”
“What did you say to her?”
“‘Good morning’ and ‘Thank you.’”
“And what did she say?”
She frowned. “Not sure. It came out so fast. But I think she said, ‘Pleased to meet you.’”
The woman was back at the door, but no longer smiling.
“The professor is out at the moment. In fact, he is away for the weekend. He will get in touch with you next week. Gomen nasai.”
She looked guilty as she closed the door.
“Sayonara,” Weezy said in a low voice, then turned to Jack, her features constricted with disappointment and concern. “Do you believe that?”
“Not for a minute.”
Anger flashed through him. Nobody blew Weezy off and closed the door in her face when he was around. Suddenly he knew what to do.
He hopped off the front steps and started walking around the side of the house.
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t turn. “To see the professor.”
Jack led her around to the backyard. Immediately he was drawn to the stone garden, but he pulled his attention away and focused on the windows into the study. There, hunched over his desk with his back to them, sat Professor Nakamura. Jack stepped up and rapped on the window.
The professor jumped as if he’d heard a gunshot. He spun in his chair and froze when he saw Jack. They locked gazes for a few seconds, Jack giving him his best glare, then the professor took a deep breath and nodded. He gave Jack the stay-there signal as he rose and left his study.
A few seconds later the rear door opened and he motioned them inside.
“Oh, dear,” he said as they filed past him. “I was hoping for a little more time before speaking to you.”
“Why is that?” Weezy said. “Did they find something?”
“Let us not talk here.”
The professor led them to the study where the three of them took up seats around the desk.
“What did they learn?” Weezy said. “Did they date it?”
The professor kept his eyes down. “Not yet.”
“Then what?”
He sighed. “I had hoped this problem would be resolved before speaking to you.”
“Problem? What problem?”
With a sinking feeling, Jack sensed what was coming.
The professor looked up but still did not make eye contact. “The artifact has been … misplaced.”
“What?” In a flash Weezy was on her feet and leaning over the desk. “What are you talking about?”
“The Smithsonian … it appears to have mislaid the artifact.”
Weezy looked at Jack with a stricken expression. “Oh, no! It’s happening there too. They’re everywhere!”
Jack needed more information before he climbed onto Weezy’s wagon.
“How does something like this happen?”
The professor shrugged. “It will be found.”
“No, it won’t!” Weezy said, her voice rising. “We’ll never see it again!”
“Young lady, I am sorry for this, but I am quite confident that by Monday, or by Tuesday latest, they will locate it. That is why I told my wife to say I am not here. I felt if I could put off speaking to you until then, all this unhappiness would be avoided.”
“How did you find out it was gone?” Jack said.
“My colleague at the Smithsonian called me yesterday, asking the whereabouts of the object I told him I was sending. I had sent it for morning delivery; he should have received it.”
“Did the delivery company get it there?”
The professor nodded. “I called Federal Express and they said they had a signature from the receiving clerk. My colleague called the clerk who said he signed for a number of packages. He put them on a cart for delivery, but the package never reached my colleague.”
“And it never will!” Weezy cried. She slammed her hands on his desk hard enough to make the pens jump. “I never, ever should have let it out of my sight!”
With that she turned and stomped out of the study.
Shock flattened the professor’s features. “Why is that one so upset? Does she not believe me? Does she think I stole it?”
Jack didn’t know what Weezy believed at that moment, but he said, “I don’t think so. She thinks she’ll never see it again. Do you really think we’ll get it back?”
“Of course. The Smithsonian will find it, I promise you. It has simply been misplaced.”
Jack wasn’t buying. He didn’t know who ran the Smithsonian, but since it was on the mall by the Capitol, he was pretty sure it was the government. The man in the suit in the Barrens last night—he worked for the government. Jack didn’t know what branch, or whether state or federal, but the way he gave orders to the state trooper made Jack pretty sure he was with some high-up agency.
High up enough to send one of its people into the Smithsonian to steal a package between the mailroom and the prof
essor’s “colleague”?
Absolutely.
“You have our phone numbers, right?”
The professor patted his desktop. “Yes-yes. Right in here.”
“Good. Please call me first if you hear anything, okay? Good news or bad news, call me first?”
“If you wish, of course. But I am sure it will be good news.”
Jack was just as sure of the opposite.
He found Weezy out on the sidewalk, getting on her bike. She had an angry expression and tears in her eyes.
“This is all your fault, Jack. I just wanted to keep it, but no, you had to talk me into letting other people look at it.”
“Me?” He had trouble hiding his shock. “We both agreed we wanted to find out what it was, and the only way to do that was to show it to people who might know.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s all your fault. I hate you, Jack! HATE YOU!”
Hate me? Jack felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. How could she hate him? He hadn’t lost the pyramid.
As she started pedaling her bike back toward 206, Carson Toliver pulled his convertible in by the curb.
“Hey, Weezy,” he called.
Without looking at him she yelled, “Shut up and leave me alone!” as she passed.
He blinked in surprise and looked at Jack. “What’s up with her?”
“She’s having a bad day.”
He smiled. “Oh. I get it. I know all about that from my sister.”
Jack started pedaling away. “Yeah,” he said around the lump in his throat.
Let Toliver think what he wanted. Jack wasn’t going to try to explain.
9
He found Weezy on the other side of 206. She’d stopped and was waiting for him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, head down, staring at the ground. “That was a stupid thing to say. I didn’t mean it.”
Jack felt the lump in his throat start to shrink, but he kept cool. Couldn’t let on how she’d gotten to him.
“So you don’t really hate me?”
She looked up at him. “I could never hate you. I’m just mad at the world right now and I needed someone to blame and you were closest. I never should have said that.”
Jack hid his relief. “Forget it. I knew you didn’t mean it.”
Not true. Crossing the highway he’d been trying to imagine life in this tiny town without Weezy to talk to and hang out with.
“Besides,” he added, “it was part mine too.”
“Yeah, but you don’t seem upset.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point? Getting upset isn’t going to help us get it back.”
“You’re too logical. Maybe that’s what made me lose it.” She shook her head. “There must be something we can do.”
“You mean, like go to Washington and help them search?”
“Of course not. It’s gone from the Smithsonian. They’ll never find it there. It’s probably back in the cube, waiting to be used for whatever it’s used for, or buried again.”
The cube and the pyramid … hundreds of miles apart, yet both stolen, and both thefts within hours of each other. It smacked of an organization with a long reach, which fell right into line with Weezy’s conspiracy theories.
“If they are back together,” Jack said, “I’ll bet they’re right here in town.”
Her eyes widened. “Where?”
“In the Lodge.”
“Why?”
“Because the Lodge is involved.”
Jack remembered what his brother had said about messing with the Lodge, how they had influence in high places. Tom wasn’t an ideal source, but he seemed to know the score on the Lodge.
He added, “Maybe they’re doing it themselves, or maybe they’re just pulling the strings, but they’re involved. Gotta be.”
Weezy was nodding. “You’re right. The Septimus Order has lodges all over the country—all over the world.” Her eyes narrowed. “You told Mister Brussard that the pyramid had gone to U of P?”
“Yeah. Wednesday night when I showed it to Steve.”
“The Lodge must have someone inside. They might have tried to steal the pyramid there but found out it had been shipped to the Smithsonian. So they had one of their people in Washington grab it from the mailroom. Then, after it’s stolen, someone starts digging up the mound, and while that’s going on, someone steals the cube and everything related to it.”
“Not everything,” Jack reminded her.
“Right.” She smiled without humor. “I remember that look you gave me when I handed you the copies. You thought I was crazy.”
“Crazy, no. But definitely …” He searched for the word. “Eccentric.”
Another smile, this one warmer. “Eccentric I accept.” She sighed. “But just say all that’s true, what can we do about it?”
“Haven’t a clue. No way we can get into the Lodge for a look. The place is like a fortress.”
And even if he could find a way in, Jack doubted he had the nerve to make use of it. He had a feeling he might never get out.
“Helpless!” Weezy spoke through clenched teeth. “I hate being helpless!”
So did Jack, but he figured every obstacle had a way around it. You just had to find it. No such thing as an insurmountable object, just people who gave up too soon.
Just then, a sheriff’s patrol car turned off the highway and cruised into town. Jack recognized Tim behind the wheel.
“Hey, Weez, want to report a theft?”
“No way. He could be a Lodger for all we know. And even if he’s not, you can bet someone above him is. Don’t waste your breath. Besides, we weren’t supposed to have something from a crime scene in the first place.”
She had a point. But Jack wanted to ask Tim something, so he flagged him down.
“Hey, Tim,” he said as the car stopped.
“Hey, Jack. What’s up?”
“Lot of commotion in the Barrens last night.”
Tim frowned. “First I’ve heard about it.”
“Yeah. Couple of helicopters with searchlights hanging over the trees. I could be wrong, but it looked like they were concentrating on that place where we found that body.”
“Helicopters? Probably from Lakehurst.”
“Didn’t look like it. These were black.” He motioned to Weezy who was hanging back by her bike. “Weezy saw them too, didn’t you, Weez?”
She nodded but said nothing and moved no closer.
“And then,” he added, “I saw some cop cars driving into the Pines—three state police cruisers.”
That last part wasn’t exactly true. The troopers had probably entered the Barrens without going through Johnson, but Jack had seen them in there.
Tim’s frowned deepened. “Staties? The sheriff never mentioned any activity out here.”
Jack faked a relieved sigh. “Well, then, I guess everything’s okay. But you know how it is. People see all that commotion and they start worrying about some sort of escaped convict hiding out in the Pines.”
Tim shook his head. “No worry there. No escapees running around. But I’m going to look into this. The state’s supposed to coordinate with the sheriff when they run an operation in the county.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Jack said, trying to look uninterested. “Just wondering.”
As Tim cruised away Jack saw him pick up the hand-piece of his police radio and start talking.
Exactly what he’d hoped he’d do.
When he reached Weezy, she said, “I don’t know if that was such a good idea. What if he starts asking the wrong people and they want to know where he got his information? When they hear it’s two kids, a boy and a girl, they may come looking.”
He shrugged. “I woke up worrying about that, but now I don’t think it’s a problem. If they want to keep that operation a secret, the last thing they’ll do is come into town and cause a scene. We’re just ‘dumb piney kids,’ remember? So who’s going to listen to us anyway, right?”
“I suppos
e.” She hunched her shoulders as if feeling a chill. “I just wonder where we’d be right now if we hadn’t got away.”
Jack decided not to wonder. That kind of thinking did nothing but crowd the brain with useless thoughts that went nowhere and accomplished nothing.
He preferred to think about their next step and what it could be. Then he remembered something he’d seen Thursday night.
He turned to Weezy. “How do you feel about going for a swim?”
10
They rode to Quaker Lake. Along the way Jack told Weezy about seeing Mr. Brussard throw something in on Thursday night.
She smiled. “Which Hardy Boy do you think you are—Joe or Frank?”
This Hardy Boy thing was getting annoying.
“Why does everybody have to say that?”
“Everybody?”
“Okay, just two—you and my father. But when you consider I’ve only told two people about what I overheard, two out of two makes a hundred percent.”
“Well, what do you expect? Sneaking around, eavesdropping from bathrooms, spying on a suspected murderer through a window”—her grin broadened—”looking for clues. If that’s not a Hardy Boy wannabe, I don’t know what is.”
She giggled. Weezy never giggled. A nice sound. But she was getting on his nerves.
“Okay. Fine. Swell—”
“See! You even say ‘swell’! Nobody says swell anymore—except maybe a Hardy Boy.”
Maybe he’d been reading too many of those old pulp magazines, but he didn’t think so.
“Lots of people say ‘swell.’”
She laughed. “Next you’ll be calling Steve your ‘chum’!”
Jack felt a sudden heaviness. “Yeah … Steve.”
Her grin faded. “Have you done anything about him?”
“Not yet. There’s been a lot going on.”
“No argument there. Way too much going on.”
They arrived at the lake and angled their bikes toward the boat area. Not a dock by any stretch. More like a patch of sandy soil where Mark Mulliner left four old canoes for rent. The charge was three dollars an hour, and renters left their payment in the coffee can sitting on the bank next to the No Swimming sign.
Mark lived up in Sooy’s Boot but left canoes with the same setup here and there in various small Pine towns. He’d stop by every evening in his truck and empty the can.
Jack: Secret Histories Page 18
